In my book in progress, “When Christian Parents Hurt,” I spend ninety percent of my time trying to pastorally care for parents whose hearts are broken over losing their children, being alienated from their children, or mistreated by their children. That’s why I’m writing the book. But in this one chapter, I want to help parents to have empathy for how difficult it is for our adult children these days, and our need, as their parents, to dial back on our expectations and obliterate our demands.

Parents, it’s our job to outgrow our need for our children’s thanks, attention, and even company. In this day, anything we receive is a blessing. Turning ideal desires into a demand is a great way to make loving you a guilty burden, and who wants to receive that?

Remember, God, Jesus and Paul all said the same thing: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5; Ephesians 5:31). That’s a command to the young couple and it’s a command to the parents to let the young man and woman go. God wants our children to leave. Physically and emotionally, they are to build a new priority that no longer centers around our desires, hurts, or needs. If I demand they put me first (or even a close second), I’m overturning God’s natural order and tempting them toward disobedience.

Your adult child has a finite amount of emotional energy. We all do. President John F. Kennedy famously said, “Show me a man who is good at golf and I’ll show you a man who is ignoring something.” When your child gets married, they should invest more emotional energy in their relationship with their spouse than they do with you. And then, every time they add a child, that child must become more important to them than you. Our job as parents is to make that transition easier for them, removing all guilt and instead affirming their need to focus on being a good spouse and parent.

So many wedding sermons focus on the new husband and wife “leaving” their parents, but wise pastors tell the couple’s parents that “leaving” is a dual proposition: the parents should make their child’s shift of allegiance and priority as painless and affirming as possible.

This hurts—but it’s part of life. I know physically giving birth hurts tremendously because I saw my wife go through it three times. But that’s what it takes to become a parent and launch your child into the world. Hurting over their relational separation is another kind of pain, but essential to what it means to parent an adult child.

Continue reading this blog on Substack HERE.

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